Auto-Free Streets and Parks

TIME’S UP! has organized over fifty direct-action traffic-calming rides through our parks, efforts that have heightened awareness of the unnecessary and undesirable presence of cars in our parks and contributed to recent increase in car-free hours in Central Park. But we need to keep up the pressure on City authorities to permanently ban cars from the loop roads in Prospect and Central Parks through direct actions.

Our yearly calendar of events for cyclists and skaters constantly promotes auto-free parks and streets. Our Prospect Park Moonlight Rides and Central Park Moonlight Rides are hugely popular. These rides offer a fascinating glimpse of what the parks would be like without cars.

Auto-Free Parks! Illustration by Andy Singer. TIME’S UP! has long been an advocate for city infrastructure that accommodates and supports non-polluting transportation. To learn about other urban infrastructures and bring home information about efforts to limit traffic in streets and parks, TIME’S UP! has visited intelligently-designed cities such as Portland, Seattle, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen.

TIME’S UP also works with local pedicab companies, which provide pollution-free transportation via tricycle taxi.

Whenever New York City targets pedestrians and cyclists, or seeks to infringe on their rights, TIME’S UP! rises to their defense. When the city attempted to install pedestrian barricades in the 1990s, TIME’S UP! organized many demonstrations to protest the city’s “pen-them-in-like-cattle” mentality.

(Speaking of which, take a look at this report on the impacts of those barricades.)

Park Drives Closed to cars. Open for people. Hooray! Photo by Jym Dyer.

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